cannot fall asleep.” (1) One of the Muslims thereupon rose and unfastened al-ʿAbbās’s bonds until his groaning ceased; only then did the Messenger of Allah ﷺ drift off to sleep. Al-ʿAbbās embraced Islam in the Year of the Conquest. He went out to meet the Messenger of Allah ﷺ at al-Juhfah, returned with him, and witnessed the Conquest. Some maintain that he had accepted Islam earlier but remained in Mecca with the Prophet’s ﷺ permission, as the hadith (2) indicates—Allah knows best.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to honor and revere him, treating him as a son treats his father, and would say, “He is the last remnant of my forefathers.” (3) Al-ʿAbbās was one of the most dutiful to Quraysh and the most compassionate toward them. He possessed sound judgment and a fully mature intellect (4). He was tall, handsome, and fair-skinned with a radiant complexion (5), and he wore his hair in two plaits. He fathered ten sons in addition to his daughters: Tammām—who was the youngest—al-Ḥārith, ʿAbd Allāh, ʿUbayd Allāh, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʿAwn, al-Faḍl, Qutham, Kathīr, and Maʿbad. He also manumitted seventy of his own slaves.

Imām Aḥmad (6) reported: ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh told us; Muḥammad ibn Ṭalḥah al-Taymī (7) of Medina told me; Abū Suhayl Nāfiʿ ibn Mālik told me, from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, from Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said regarding al-ʿAbbās, “This al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib is the most open-handed of Quraysh and the best of them in maintaining family ties.” This report is unique to him (8).

It is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (9) that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent ʿUmar to collect the obligatory charity and he was told that Ibn Jamīl, Khālid ibn al-Walīd, and al-ʿAbbās—the uncle of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ—had refused, the Prophet ﷺ said: “Ibn Jamīl has nothing to complain about except that he was poor and Allah enriched him. As for Khālid, you are wronging him, for he has set aside his coats of mail and equipment in the path of Allah. And as for al-ʿAbbās, its payment is upon me—and another equal to it besides.” He then added, “O ʿUmar, do you not know that a man’s uncle is the counterpart of his father?” (10)

It is also recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (11), on the authority of Anas, that ʿUmar went out to beseech Allah for rain. He took al-ʿAbbās with him and sought rain through his supplication, saying: “O Allah, whenever we were plagued by drought we would seek You through our Prophet and You would send us rain; now we seek You through the uncle of our Prophet, so grant us rain.” And they were indeed given rain.